


Conversations with Roach

by Oaksoul



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Other, The Witcher Netflix Series Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 11:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22849258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oaksoul/pseuds/Oaksoul
Summary: Decades passed between Geralt's encounter with Renfri and the Battle of Sodden.  What did he think her last words to him meant?
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 2
Kudos: 40





	Conversations with Roach

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place between and during several episodes of season 1 of the Witcher. After watching all eight episodes, I was left with some intense feelings that I didn't quite know how to process. Hopefully writing this got them all out. My first ever fanfic after almost two decades of reading them.

Half a day’s ride out of Blaviken, Geralt slowed by a stream to allow his horse a rest and drink.

“She knew exactly what he would say, Roach- ‘you made a choice, and you’ll never know if it was the right one.’ That’s too much to be a coincidence. Renfri was clairvoyant, that much was true. Stregobor could have lied about anything else, but he was right about that.” 

Roach drank silently. Geralt was not fool enough to believe she grasped the intricacies of human speech. Yet still, his meaning reached her on a primal level, one that could not be explained by wise men and priests. At least that was what Geralt hoped. If nothing else, it eased the burden of loneliness as liquor would ease the burden of consciousness.

“She was trying to tell me something, a warning. How did she phrase it? ‘You will try to outrun the girl in the woods, but you cannot. She is your destiny.’ Renfri foresaw her own death. Could she have foreseen mine as well? There are such things, vampiric monsters in dark forests that take the form of beautiful women, or lost girls. A bruxa, perhaps. Is that how I will meet my end, when I’m finally too old to fight?”

\----------

After receiving the heaviest purse of his career in Temeria, Geralt returned to the inn where Roach had been stabled, eager to pay off his debt to the landlord and move further down the road. Having first checked that she was properly fed and sheltered, Geralt selected a brush from a nearby shelf and began to work a tangle out of her mane. 

“I tried to get rid of it, girl. The brooch, you know the one. I thought I was so clever. I’ve been carrying around the guilt of the princess I killed for how many years? I would simply gift it to the princess I saved, and all would be absolved. How poetic! Jaskier would make a meal out of that tale. But no, the damned trinket still made its way back to me.

“I know what she meant now. Renfri was the girl in the woods, and her ghost will always follow me. A hundred rescued damsels won’t change that. No, I can’t outrun her. The sooner I accept that, the better. At the next sign of civilization, I will find a decent smith. The brooch shall be joined to the hilt of my sword, a sort of coat-of-arms. Worn not out of pride, but to - well, you get the idea.”

\----------

Sometimes a witcher finds monsters. Sometimes money. Today Geralt had met neither. A coalition of goatherds had raised a few orens for a contract on an “ogre” that had been terrorizing their flocks at night. They came to the witcher desperate, fearing they would soon need to sell their land and slaughter their livestock. To Geralt’s amusement, the monster turned out to be a sell-sword in an elaborate costume, hired by a nearby baron hoping to acquire his neighbors’ land at a bargain price. Geralt subdued the scoundrel with Axii and, suppressing his laughter, hauled him to a local jail. The goatherds, their fear forgotten, quickly became legal sages. The contract, they explained, was for an ogre. No ogre, no coin.

And yet, fortune had still met the witcher. A bridge had been closed, preventing his departure from the village, and delaying him just as a familiar sorceress arrived. Yennefer was “researching” rumors of a talisman held by a local shaman and said to possess unique curative properties. It was, in fact, a wind-up mechanical toy. Over a drink, the two had discussed their mutual befuddlement. At the moment they realized the similarity of each other’s plight, they burst out laughing in unison.

Though their time together was brief, it brought them to some new, unexpected place. There were few truly happy moments in the life of a witcher or an errant mage, moments of pure mirth and bliss. In the days before the bridge was repaired and the world required them to part, they forgot themselves.

Outside the village, Geralt brought Roach down to a slow trot. “I haven’t felt this way before. And yes, I know I sound like a smitten lordling poet. Yennefer and I, we keep meeting each other, more than chance would seem to allow. Have I been wrong all this time? Could she be the girl in the woods? Is Yennefer my destiny?”

\----------

A week had passed since the fall of Cintra. Death in the wake of the Nilfgaardians was absolute. In truth, Geralt did not know where he and Roach were going. To Kaer Morhen, he supposed numbly. Never mind that it was half a continent away. It helped to imagine that he had a destination.

“I was there after, in her room. A lifetime too late. Why would I linger in that place? There was no one left. They were so very thorough.

“A green dress hung on the wall. That was her dress. A book was left marked, unfinished. Her book. There were knucklebones on a table. Her game.

“It shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t. What could she possibly mean to me, or I to her? She didn’t know who I was. I never saw her face. There was a girl on the street. It was certainly her. I could have stopped and spoken to her, seen her eyes and heard her voice, but what was there to say?

“Do you think Calanthe or Mousesack would have mentioned me to her? It’s not hard to imagine the Queen forbidding my name at court. It’s better that way. Better than to think her last moments were spent wondering when the mighty Geralt of Rivia would swoop in and save her.

“She’s gone now. None survived. Yen is gone too, she won’t speak to me again. And Jaskier… why did I say those things? Why did he have to care about me so much? At least his lot will improve without me. I couldn’t protect him, tagging along on my hunts. Ask the princess of Cintra what my protection is worth.”

He abruptly fell silent when he realized what he’d said, as though Roach had reproached him. No one would be able to ask the girl anything again. Up ahead, just within his line of sight, a man was moving a corpse. Either a grave robber, or a fool attempting to tend to the dead. It didn’t matter, he’d soon be dead regardless, and Geralt was past caring.

\----------

_How do you like my eyes?_

_You don’t get to use that name!_

_Please, don’t go…_

  
  


His throat dry, his head pounding, his leg in agony, Geralt was slowly regaining his bearings in the back of the stubborn man’s cart. Roach pulled up the rear, ever the faithful companion. Once he was well enough to ride and they were alone again, Geralt would share his fever-induced revelation with his only confidante.

It had been her all along. Visenna. His m- no, that word didn’t apply to her. It made no difference whether she had really been with him in some invisible state, tending to his wounds, or if she had been a fanciful hallucination. She was the girl in the woods. She was the one he couldn’t outrun. All of his relationships had been poisoned by her. Her and his fear of being left alone. He couldn’t bear to lose Yennefer, so he made that damnable wish and bound their fates together. He knew, he just knew that Jaskier would abandon him eventually, so he abandoned the bard first. Geralt of Rivia would always carry the brand of one woman. She was his destiny.

He felt the cart slow as they approached a farmhouse. “Whoa lads. Whoa now,” commanded the stubborn man.

“Yurga,” called a woman emerging from the dwelling. “I need to tell you something. I met a girl. An orphan, I found her in the woods nearby.”

Geralt’s eyes shot open. As the woman’s words reached him, a single thought saturated every thread of his brain. It was illogical, nonsensical, impossible, and the only truth he had ever known. It was as debatable as the moon and sun, as subtle as an eclipse. 

“I met a witcher. He saved my life. Now fetch him an ale before he goes to Sodden. Hey! Butcher! Where are ya goin’?”

Geralt thought he heard the stubborn man’s voice as he limped into the treeline, but his world was somewhere else. He didn’t recognize his own mind. Every day he’d lived had been in service of this moment. Yet he didn’t dare think it would be this easy. He stopped. He listened far, reached out with the hearing Vesemir had given him-

And there was nothing. Nothing in the woods for half a league except deer and birds. It was nearly impossible to sneak up on a witcher in the open. It would require a being of immense power. Feeling tired and empty, he turned back.

A twig snapped behind him. _No, that’s not real. Don’t let yourself believe that is real._ _That cannot be what you think it is. What you want it to be._

Slowly, he turned around.

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
